There has been an absolute frenzy over President Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord. To hear some talk, this one decision will doom the whole planet.In actuality, it is much ado about nothing. First of all, the accord is based on the simplistic assumption that a certain action will result in an exact temperature drop. Our climate is much more complicated than that. I once heard about a climate model that produced drastically different results when everything was rounded to four decimal places. Second, the treaty doesn’t require anyone to do anything. Finally, it has no legal standing in the United States since President Obama never submitted it to the Senate for ratification.

So what should Trump have done? I think he should have said that, since it was never ratified, we will not follow it. That way, we would still be part of the organization and not isolate ourselves. Instead, he created the false choice of either withdrawing or facing burdensome climate regulations.​Apparently he has decided the key to reelection is to satisfy his base and ignore everybody else. Just because it worked last time doesn’t mean it will work next time.​